Resistance is not futile
Short stories, as I find myself repeatedly telling myself, are a slightly unsettling read. It’s to do with the variable length of reading time. A short can be just too short, and if you read several by the same writer in fairly quick succession, there can be a sense of ‘here we go again’ as a writer’s pattern repeats.
And so I found here, with Sillitoe. In some ways, to my taste, this collection would have been better served by having fewer of the ‘stories in the middle section’ The first, ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner’ is a marvellous novella, rather than short story. It is full of bitter, angry realism, a heady mix of despair, resignation and empowerment. It was of course also made into an iconic film of the 60s, part of the New Wave of Cinema – which included the film of another Sillitoe book, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Tom Courtenay, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, 1962, director Tony Richardson
The central character of the title story is a troubled, disadvantaged young Nottinghamshire teen, doing time in a Borstal, after he was caught with the proceeds of a robbery – in a scene which mixes dark humour with pathos. The story, told in the first person is imbued with a sharp, intelligent sense of the unfair nature of an unequal society.
Smith did not have the chances, due to poverty and deprivation for any kind of better life (the book was published in 1959) Petty crime offered glamour, excitement – and food on the table.
In his time in the Borstal, the superficially progressive prison governor discovers that Smith has a rare talent for running, and when a cross-country running competition is set up against a prestigious school, the prison governor sees glory for himself and his running of his Borstal, in pitting his prize boy against the elite. For Smith, the buzz, the graft and the drudgery of daily training offer a meaningful solitary time for expansive, curiously transcendental thought, bringing him to a wider consciousness of himself and the system he is caught within
Although the ending of the story is never really going to be in doubt, once the reader sees how Smith’s process of analysis is going, it is gloriously satisfying.
Sillitoe himself came from precisely the same kind of background as the characters in this and the other stories in the collection. What I like is the sense of fire and spirit, the individuality and humanity in his characters, despite the fact that life does what it can to grind this down and away. He neither patronises, pities, indulges or allows his characters to indulge in ‘poor me misery’ in the best of the stories.
Of the shorter stories, I found ‘The Fishing Boat Picture’, the story of a mismatched marriage between a bookish postman who liked a quiet life and the ‘big-boned girl yet with a good figure and a nice enough face’ whom he marries rather in haste, followed by the inevitable joint repentance at leisure, a particularly strong one. The twist in the story is not a twist of event, rather, one of dignity, sensitivity, tenderness and emotional refinement inside what seems like unpromising, wasted lives
I was also moved by the sad pathos of ‘Uncle Ernest’, a lonely man who, through pity, forms a friendship with two manipulative young girls. I think a modern writer would have done something more sensationalist with this, and maybe, in the light of recent events, the idea that there can be innocent friendships is something which gets more cynically viewed.
Some of the later stories (when I had got the measure of the writing), such as ‘On Saturday Afternoon’, where the narrator, a young boy, assists another typical Sillitoe loner in his suicide attempt, just because he (the boy) was feeling ‘black and fed –up because everybody in the family had gone to the pictures’ seemed a little contrived, an attempt, curiously enough to lift with mordant humour, a darkening collection.
However, the very different end story absolutely raised the game again for me. ‘The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller’. This is either a more fully autobiographical story, or a story where the writer wants us to believe in its autobiography, as the narrator in this is a writer called Alan, originally from a background of poverty and deprivation, whose success as a writer has taken him out of class, out of background, and into a much more gracious life, now in Majorca (Mallorca) . Sillitoe did indeed live for several years in France, Spain and specifically in Mallorca
In this endpiece story, quite different in tone to the earlier pieces, the theme is that of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ The writer muses of a life formed through a passion for books, reading and writing. His relationship to them is ambivalent, they are :
Items which have become part of me, foliage that has grown to conceal the bare stem of my real personality, what I was like before I ever saw these books, or any book at all, come to that. Often I would like to rip them away from me one by one, extract their shadows out of my mouth and heart, cut them neatly with a scalpel from my jungle-brain. Impossible. You can’t wind back the clock that sits grinning on the marble shelf. You can’t even smash its face in and forget it
The writer, in his present, is taken back in time from the aural equivalent of Proust’s madeleine – the song of the cuckoo, into a flooded, present remembrance of himself, earlier in life, and tells the important story of Frankie Buller, who he was, who he was for Alan, and the moment when life paths diverge.
We were marching to war, and I was a part of his army, with an elderberry stick at the slope and my pockets heavy with smooth, flat, well-chosen stones that would skim softly and swiftly through the air, and strike the forehead of enemies
The gathering up of Sillitoe’s time and place in this, as stages of his life are weaved into and out of, is wonderful.
I was offered this as a digital copy for review, by Open Road Media, a States based
company who bring many ‘gone out of print’ writers from earlier in the twentieth century, back into circulation. They are meticulous (not all digitisers are!) in producing versions which read seamlessly and cleanly on ereaders
This particular version is not the one available in the UK, I have linked to the UK ‘available on Kindle’ which was an earlier publication. The stories are the same, and in the same order, but the UK Kindle and USA Kindle (Open Road) contain different afterwords, by different authors. Open Road’s version has an afterword by Sillitoe’s wife, Ruth Fainlight, a writer herself, and photographs
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Amazon UK
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Amazon USA
I read the collection many, many years ago — in the late 1960s, at a guess — and, while I remember enjoying it hugely, I’ve obviously forgotten most of the details. Not so the title novella, which has remained in my mind ever since. It’s a magnificent achievement — just reading the title still conjures up for me that feeling of solitude which Sillitoe so perfectly captured.
Many thanks for this great review.
Thank you realthog. I do think the title story and the last one are the standouts. I have Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on the Kindle too, which I read way back when, and am interested in re-reading, though not immediately, as I need to do the ‘clean your palate’ with another author to avoid an overload of one person’s voice and style
PS I LOVE the fact you have made me one of the ‘other shady characters’ on your blog. Thank you, I am chuffed (dons shades, and practices tough stance)
It’s the fatale look that you should be aiming to achieve.
What about tough fatale (adds lipstick, does twirly things to hair with heating tongs, throws all pastel shades out of wardrobe) The main problem is the necessary tightness of the pencil skirts and especially those stilettos make moving fast a problem. Practices walking without tottering or falling over……….
Very interesting post, Lady F. You’re right about short stories – it can be so hard to get a collection right, and indeed to read one without them all blurring together. Maybe we should use short stories as palate cleaners between other novels!
That is an excellent idea!
Another excellent review, Lady F. I especially like your commentary on the sense of fire and spirit, the individuality and humanity in Sillitoe’s characters – those qualities really come through in your review.
I know what you mean about some of the downsides of short stories too. It’s so easy to overdose on them if you read too many by the same writer in fairly quick succession. I usually try to spread a collection over two or three weeks just to avoid all the stories merging together in my mind (although sometimes that makes things difficult when it comes to writing the review). I guess it’s a question of finding the right balance.
Yes, it’s thinking about this in review terms which is difficult. New resolution, from your and Karen’s comments : try to think of short stories like a fine box of good quality dark chocolate : one, or at the most two, suffices, have another in a day or so. I don’t think I savour short stories enough, and read them as if my reading were eating a main meal, not the slow enjoyment of a bon-bon!
What an interesting collection (and a great review), I’ve read ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,’ but no other Sillitoe. Besides anything else, he does have the most wonderful titles for his works…
Thank you Shoshi. I shall re-read Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, also from Open Road, in a few weeks
Hmm… I started out thinking I hadn’t read these, but as your review went through the stories they seemed very familiar. I suspect I must have read them a hundred years or so ago when the world was young. I vaguely recall going through an ‘angry young man’ phase in my early twenties. I’m not sure whether I want to re-read them, but I have a sudden urge to watch Look Back in Anger again…
I read Saturday Night, but not the story collection. And saw Saturday Night, but not Long Distance Runner, and am minded to watch both
i have similar struggles with short stories. Just at the point I am getting interested, they are wound up. If i read the collection i end up feeling i’ve had a series of appetisers rather than a main course.
Yes, I think I need to retrain my appetite, and think ‘plate of meze!’ , or ‘little and often’
That is very typical of a short story collection, isn’t it? Knockout opening and closing stories with what feels like layers of the same ingredients the middle. I have not read anything by Sillitoe, so I may take a bit of a peek at this one.
Yes, that is probably a good observation. But i am going to try and approach short stories differently, and not try to eat them all in one go!